Council, found (British Medical Journal, May 28, 1904) among over 1,500 girls, who represent the flower of the schools, since they had obtained scholarships enabling them to proceed to higher grade schools, that 22 per cent, presented some degree, not always pronounced, of lateral curvature of the spine, though such cases were very rare among the boys.  In the same way among a very similar class of select girls at the Chicago Normal School, Miss Lura Sanborn (Doctors’ Magazine, Dec., 1900) found 17 per cent, with spinal curvature, in some cases of a very pronounced degree.  There is no reason why a girl should not have as straight a back as a boy, and the cause can only lie in the defective muscular development which was found in most of the cases, sometimes accompanied by anaemia.  Here and there nowadays, among the better social classes, there is ample provision for the development of muscular power in girls, but in any generalized way there is no adequate opportunity for such exercise, and among the working class, above all, in the section of it which touches the lower middle class, although their lives are destined to be filled with a constant strain on the neuro-muscular system from work at home or in shops, etc., there is usually a minimum of healthy exercise and physical development.  Dr. W.A.B.  Sellman, of Baltimore ("Causes of Painful Menstruation in Unmarried Women,” American Journal Obstetrics, Nov., 1907), emphasizes the admirable results obtained by moderate physical exercise for young women, and in training them to care for their bodies and to rest their nervous systems, while Dr. Charlotte Brown, of San Francisco, rightly insists on the establishment in all towns and villages alike of outdoor gymnastic fields for women and girls, and of a building, in connection with every large school, for training in physical, manual, and domestic science.  The provision of special playgrounds is necessary where the exercising of girls is so unfamiliar as to cause an embarrassing amount of attention from the opposite sex, though when it is an immemorial custom it can be carried out on the village green without attracting the slightest attention, as I have seen in Spain, where one cannot fail to connect it with the physical vigor of the women.  In boys’ schools games are not only encouraged, but made compulsory; but this is by no means a universal rule in girls’ schools.  It is not necessary, and is indeed highly undesirable, that the games adopted should be those of boys.  In England especially, where the movements of women are so often marked by awkwardness, angularity and lack of grace, it is essential that nothing should be done to emphasize these characteristics, for where vigor involves violence we are in the presence of a lack of due neuro-muscular cooerdination.  Swimming, when possible, and especially some forms of dancing, are admirably adapted to develop the bodily movements of women both vigorously and harmoniously (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis,